Trump's appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions supports Private Prison Industry

POLITRICKS: Sessions has repeatedly expressed support for private prisons over the past 20 years. As Attorney General of Alabama, Sessions greenlighted the use of private prisons in his own state. In early 1996, Sessions wrote an advisory opinion stating that state law allowed Alabama to contract with private companies to manage state prisons, according to the Birmingham News. The privatization push was led by State Prison Commissioner Ron Jones, who was forced to resign a few months later for trying to turn the female prison population into a shackled chain gang. In 2006, Sessions helped a private prison in Perry County, Alabama secure a lucrative federal contract to house undocumented immigrants awaiting court proceedings or deportation, according to the Birmingham News. The prison had been empty because state lawmakers balked at the cost of housing inmates at the private facility.

The horrors of private prisons are well documented. In August, a report from the Justice Department inspector general found dramatically higher levels of violence between inmates and between inmates and staff at private prisons that contracted with the Bureau of Prisons than at comparable public facilities. The inspector general also found more instances of lockdowns and unjustified use of isolation units and solitary confinement. The report, which corroborated years of evidence of mismanagement at private prisons— an investigation (conducted by Mother Jones organization) of a Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) prison in Louisiana—prompted the Obama administration's decision to phase out its contracts with private prisons.